The Australian ensemble Decibel specializes in performing new music integrating electronics with acoustic instruments. In this new release from Pogus the group presents engaging realizations of four works by composer Alvin Lucier, three of which are here given their recorded debut. The four compositions, all recorded live in Perth, span the years 1967-2002, with the most recent—Ever Present, the first track on the disc—being the only one to have appeared on a previous recording. The works are well-chosen and provide an excellent point of entry to Lucier’s oeuvre. 

As a program opener, Ever Present pulls the listener immediately into Lucier’s hermetic sound world. Performed with flute, saxophone, piano and two sine wave generators, the piece creates an absorbing atmosphere of slow movement over a fundamental drone, the relatively short duration of the piano’s occasional notes contrasting with the held tones from the wind instruments. The piece has a horizontal rather than a vertical profile, which is to say that the tones of the various instruments are experienced as independent entities rather than as linked elements stacked into a single harmony. If slowly shifting and superimposed transparent planes of color made a sound, this would be it.

Carbon Copies (1989), also featuring saxophone, flute and piano but with recorded sound in place of the sine wave generators, takes us from Ever Present’s rarefied abstraction down to the mundane world captured in the field recordings that constitute its core. The piece has a tripartite structure, beginning with the playback of field recordings alone, which are then joined by the instruments. The third and final part eliminates the recordings, to leave the instruments by themselves. The piano and wind instruments’ contributions run to the timbral and episodic as the players set out to interpret the recorded sounds as mimetically as they can. In effect the field recordings serve as a kind of real-time, aural score for the musicians to realize. 

Hands (1994) is a work for organ and hand movements, the latter being used in relation to the organ pipes in order to affect the sound emitted while sustained semitones are played. The dissonance of these minor second harmonies creates beats, trills and a generally unsettled sonic tension, while the hand movements coax slow, sometimes siren-like glissandi as well as changes in dynamics from the instrument. 

The disc closes with the earliest composed work, Shelter (1967) for contact microphones, amplifiers, and enclosed space. The piece offers a commentary on the division of sonic space by architectural space by conveying sounds originating from outside the performance space—the “shelter” of the title—to a system of amplifiers, equalizers and speakers inside it. Contact microphones placed on structural supports enclosing the space pick up external sound as it vibrates through doors and walls and transmit it to the audio system. The present realization captures a quiet sound much like the background hum of a refrigerator or HVAC unit punctuated by what appear to be the sounds of musicians playing in distant rooms. 

Highly recommended. -  D. Barbiero, Avant Music News

Alvin Lucier somehow manages to come up with compositions that have such a personal singleness of purpose that they may exasperate you at first. But the more you listen, the more you cannot forget them. You even at the end like them, or I usually do, but as part of a process. I remember buying his two-LP set years ago, Music On A Long Thin Wire. I was not a very patient person then. Life was something I had to "do" at that point, the more quickly, the better. That music was oh, so slowly moving that I could not at that time bear it. Only later, in fact only in the last 10 years when it was available on CD did I come to appreciate it a great deal.

Now I am not saying that you are going to feel the same way about the group Decibel's performance of four Lucier works, on the CD Still and Moving Lines (Pogus 21072-2). I don't think exasperation will be your reaction, even the first time out. In fact you may well find the works more readily accessible like I did. That may have something to do with the very sympathetic reading that Decibel gives them. They are a Perth, Australia based new music ensemble that favors works that combine acoustic instruments, electronics and the incorporation of the environment into performances. And it just so happens that the four Lucier works do all of that in varying degrees.

Perhaps the more difficult work is "Shelter" (1967) for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space. They use the auditorium of an Australian music conservatory, placing pickups on walls, doors, etc., that receive everyday, typical sound vibrations coming from outside the auditorium and then generate the external-internal filtering and amplification of those sounds into the auditorium via loudspeakers. This is an example of Lucier's more experimental period and the sounds are fascinating but do take some getting used to.

On the other hand, his "Ever Present" (2002) for flute, saxophone and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator is much more readily grasped. The combination of instrumental parts and the ever changing pitch of the oscillator has a somewhat more conventional "new music" sound to it and it is masterfully performed.

"Hands" (1994) and "Carbon Copies" (1989) are somewhere in between the two extremes, but generally have that sustained performative rigor (and vigor) that define the best of instrumental Lucier.

It is surely something to do with the talent and sensitivity of Decibel that these works are so communicative. But of course, again, these are some excellent Lucier works covering a wide span of time.

If you want to experience Alvin Lucier and why he remains so central and vibrant to the new music scene, this is a great place to start. It definitely is up among his very best. - Grego Applegate-Edwards, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

This album is unfortunately named on two accounts.  First of all, there are at least 13 other recording artists that have used the name Decibel.  Second, there is an earlier release by Alvin Lucier called "Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas".  While it would be interesting to hear the Mexican avant-prog group Decibel performing that early work by Lucier, what we have instead are first recordings of Lucier pieces by an Australian group.

In the later years of Lucier's compositional catalog, he seems to have fallen into a rut.  Over and over again there are pieces written for acoustic instruments and sine waves.  I can only guess it was an easy way out of writing commissions for varying instrumental ensembles.  But it lacks the variety of sonic situations that made him such an important figure in the 1960s and 1970s.  This CD is almost predictably opens with "Ever Present" (2002) for flute, saxophone and piano with slow sweep pure wave oscillator.  Despite my grumbling, it still does result in a lovely piece.  The spacious isolation of notes makes me think of the later Cage compositions, although the performance also has a tint of Feldman's melancholy.

From here the pieces thankfully become more diverse.  "Carbon Copies" (1989) for saxophone, piano, flute and playback uses performer made environmental recordings as a pattern for action.  The composition dictates four sections.  The first is the environmental recording alone.  The second brings in the instrumentalists who are attempting to copy what they hear on their recording.  The third repeats this except that the original environmental recordings are only heard by the instrumentalist and not in the final mix.  And finally after this work up, the instrumentalists play from from a memory of that initial recording.  The results evoke a comparison with AMM for me.  It could be the stabs of piano drawing to mind John Tilbury, but more likely it is the glacial sense of movement as both of the wind instruments focus on continuous sounds to mimic the ambient recording.  So the version here is rather low key, which is in keeping with the overall timbre of the disc.  It would be interesting to hear a recording of "Carbon Copies" by Challenge, the group that originally commissioned this piece, as a line up including Anthony Braxton, David Rosenboom, and William Winant would probably be very lively and quite a contrast to this.

Drawing closer to stasis is "Hands" (1984) for organ with four players which preoccupies itself with subtle harmonic variances created by playing adjacent semitones in the midst of a large drone of sustained sound.  The motion reminds me a little of the drone at the heart of Jon Gibson's "Visitations".

But it is the closing piece on the disc, "Shelter" (1969) for vibration pickups, amplification system and enclosed space, which I feel is the most beautiful inclusion on the disc.  The piece is simple and poetic and the results reflect this.  Contact microphones are placed on the walls and doors of an auditorium.  These pick up the subtle vibrations from the surrounding environment, including other musicians rehearsing elsewhere in the music conservatory, filtered through the substance of the room.  The results are ghostly as the sounds are softened and seem to float through.

Overall this is quite an enjoyable, peaceful and meditative listen, and perhaps a stand out among recent CDs of Lucier's music.  The recording quality is crisp which is important in a music where the highlights are found in the tiny details.

The packaging is a smartly designed black and white poster folded down to a square of about 5.75".  So it will annoyingly not fit in with your other CDs.  I can appreciate the dislike of jewel cases, but it is nice to have something with a spine that I can easily file to find again. - Eric, Bixobal